Friends of God and Prophets manifests Johnson's feminist, non-hierarchal assumptions, which are essentially all inclusive. Just as Mary cannot be helpful to women when interpreted as 'unique among her sex', so too saints cannot be appreciated today if understood as 'heavenly power' petitioned 'earthly neediness'. The historical overview of the communion of saints in Friends of God Prophets demonstrates how two distinct models of the relationship between the living and the dead in Christ emerged, one based on the biblical model of community and the other on the late Roman system of patronage, which eventually came to dominate. Johnson concludes that the rise of patronage left earlier themes undeveloped in the theology of the saints; thus she returns to and emphasizes the earlier model of 'companions and comrades in the one Spirit-filled community.'